Hoyer will start for Browns, and it was an easy choice

After watching 10 days of training camp practices, Mike Pettine circled back to his original plan for the Cleveland Browns preseason opener. Brian Hoyer, not Johnny Manziel, will start that game at Ford Field in Detroit.

Pettine and the Browns did a good job in recent days of building drama, hinting that maybe there was a chance Manziel could get those first live snaps of the preseason, as the first-round pick took his first first-team snaps in practice on Monday, but really this didn’t seem to be a difficult decision for Pettine.

Hoyer, as the veteran and the closest thing to an incumbent starter the Browns had, was given the first chance to win the starting job, and though he didn’t pull away from Manziel over the last week and a half, he didn’t do anything to lose the job either.

If Manziel is going to close the gap on Hoyer, and finally give Pettine and his staff real reason to think Manziel and not Hoyer should win the job, it will happen because of what happens when the preseason games start.

We saw glimpses of it last week in the scrimmage in Akron, when Hoyer was clearly more advanced in operating Kyle Shanahan’s offense, and made several confident throws to convert third downs early in the practice. But in his first, albeit limited, live action, Manziel showed that spark that made him so exciting to watch at Texas A&M, while scrambling and displaying accuracy while throwing on the run.

Pettine has not yet named a starter for the team’s second preseason game, Aug. 18 against Washington, but told reporters on Tuesday that he would still like to name the starter for the regular season by the time the team plays its third preseason game, on Aug. 23.